IndiaMART Knowledge Services: July 2011

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Video Can Redefine Customer Service for Your Business

Social Media is a phenomena which is not just for the rich businesses, infact many small and emerging businesses are catching onto the trend of leveraging the new media strongly. It not just improves their operational efficiency but also gives them a creative outlet. Many SMEs have actually leveraged social tools available for free to connect with their target audience, whether the employees or the customers.

Re-define your customer service with a video!
Many SMEs are caught up with this task of ensuring proper customer service and be available at all times for their customers. This is where scaling up challenges appear, but smart companies are using video to address customers feedback. This way you create a powerful connect with your customers and are almost physically there, speaking to your audience.

How to do it, do you have an example?
Well, yes! In the video below, as Tiger Woods walks on water to take the shot, one customer who saw this as a glitch, re-posted this video on YouTube saying this is glitch in the advertisement. The company instead of doing nothing, actually posted this video in response:

The video above delivers a powerful message while engaging the customer into a message from the company that we listen to you and we are quick to respond back. Creating this video would not have taken EA Sports much of a time actually. The Ad was shot, editing it as a response and posting it on YouTube is more of a creative thought.

How can you do it on a smaller scale?
Instead of doing monthly email newsletters, you can create a monthly Video newsletter, where the top management/ project management team in your company comes on board and talks to the customer, giving them an update to, what's happening! Seeing people talking in a video is far more engaging than a email newsletter, much of it already goes into SPAM.

All you need for this is a simple video camera and an editor like the Windows LIVE Movie Maker. Once you are done, post the video on your official YouTube channel and send a link to your customers rather than the newsletter the nest time and obviously they will be engaged.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to create new opportunities or SMEs to grow. To know more about how you can leverage the news, internet and new media technologies, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will be happy to help!

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Israeli Startup Changes the Way Customers Order Food in Restaurants

Innovation is the name of the game and who better than start-ups to lead the charge. Small and Emerging businesses are the one's which innovate across to create new offerings to solve many customer oriented challenges. The one advantage that SMEs have over many of their larger counterparts is that they have the open-ness and ability to think across many different directions to reach to a solution of a problem. Such innovations have in the recent times changed the way people engage and are slowly introducing an evolved form of interactivity in human emotion.

E-Menu the future of restaurant technology
One such Israeli startup has developed a technology which not only helps restaurants save cost on human resources, but also helps them keep the customers engaged with engaging games and participative ways of ordering food. The video below explains how:

How is this technology changing the game?

The very first thing by eliminating the whole concept of having waiters to serve at the restaurant. The touch screen technology also creates a whole new engagement level which the customer can interact with, while ordering food. You can present the customer with more elaborate information about the food they are ordering, hence empowering them to take an informed decision about what they are consuming. Also these screen can be used as engaged advertising mediums.

What is the simplest way you can experience this?

While many customers are using touch screen interactive devices like the iPhone and the iPAD, they are obviously touching information and consuming it in a manner which was not possible before. You can simply create such information and do a proof of concept with your target customers. Mobility is giving a new edge to businesses to help them reach out to their customers in a more personalized and engaging manner.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to create new opportunities or SMEs to grow. To know more about how you can leverage the internet and new media technologies, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will be happy to help!

Friday, July 29, 2011

How Can Relevant Content Improve Search Results for Your Business

Many small and medium businesses as part of their stepping into online experience, invest into something that they have been told since ages about. This something is called: SEO OR Search Engine Optimization. SEO is basically a methodology with which one claims to improve the organic search listing of a website. Essentially SEO is nothing but the act of ensuring that your website is always updated with the relevant content and keywords which are relevant to your domain and which your customers are searching your business online with.

The basic objective of optimizing your web properties for search engines, is to make it easier for search engines to find and index your site. Though there are many permutations and combinations of factors which determine your website's position in a particular search engine, the most common understanding is content.

Fresh and Relevant Content Drives Search Indexing
Many companies spend much money into SEO, without really realizing that the first step of really optimizing your website is to ensure that your web content is always fresh and up to date. Also that it is being updated on a periodic basis according to what the analytic(s) of the website suggests.

If you have constantly updated and relevant content on your website, the search engines get fresh food for them to feast upon and hence your site is indexed, while probably improving on its index ranking.

How do I ensure Fresh and Relevant Content?
Not everyone out there is a content company and hence you do need to work with professionals who understand your business, your target audience and hence position your business smartly to the customer who would react to/ engage with the information shared.

This obviously creates relevant traffic on your website which further's your objective of improving your search listing.

For getting fresh content, you can always take help of a communications expert who knows how to position your business to your target audience, while ensuring that the content is optimized for the search engines. If you have the capability of keeping someone full time on this, a suggestion is that you must, otherwise shaping the 15-20 year business call will be very difficult.

But how do we know if our content is all right or not?
Using Google Analytics is the first of the many analytics tools. Also by using other free tools, you can ind which areas of your website. Once you arrive onto this, the same is treated to drive relevant traffic to your website.

*this is just one of the many and very crucial part of search algorithms, which are otherwise very focused and hence it can be integrated and bettered.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to create new opportunities or SMEs to grow. To know more about how you can leverage the internet and new media technologies, drop in a comment to this post and our team of experts will be happy to help!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Its Out Finally: facebook for Businesses

Many businesses, both large and small have been overtime trying to understand what all they could do with facebook, how can they best leverage the service and how can their business get the real ROI, while helping them achieve business objectives. Almost all the time, these companies have to turn to agencies who claim to do social media magic. The investment in such projects is huge and may a times does not really gets the results smaller companies are looking at.

Now learn how you can leverage facebook for your business?

The above screen capture shows you what new has facebook come up with. Its a facebook business page. Its purely an information driven page which actually helps you as a business understand the various features of facebook which you can explore and use for your business.

From creating a facebook fan page for your business to creating your presence on facebook places. facebook Ads to the realm, the page essentially helps you understand how best can you leverage various facebook features for your business.

To know more about the best practices of how businesses have leveraged facebook, click on the following Best Practices link.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

How Can Small Businesses Use QR Codes?

How much information can you get out of the image above? Well, no we are not kidding, there actually is information stored in the image above. Its called the QR code. While not yet mainstream, QR codes are getting in the thick of things as they are being published in mainstream publications and other places where people can have access to it.

What is a QR code?

This WikiPedia article best describes what a QR code exactly is. "A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera telephones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data." source - Wikipedia

How can you create your own QR Code?

Simply go to the following URL and type in the URL you want to encode, as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you press "Create QR Code", you get the result which we have shown on the top.

How can small businesses use QR codes?

Quickly share business cards

Including a QR code on your business card is a good move. Here you are allowing someone who intends to know more about you to directly scan the QR code and reach to the online destination/ piece of information online about you.

Increase event registrations

If you are doing an event of which you have posted across the Internet and you are reaching out to more people through offline modes of advertising, you might as well include the QR code to a mobile version of your website, which has a registration form, which users can fill and you have your business objective achieved.

Convert offline traffic into online viewers

Obviously if you use a QR code to re-direct your customer simply to a website of your company/ product it might not really serve the purpose, but if you have a smart "mobile version" of your site available, you can very smartly make your offline target audience to engage with your services/ products online. This can be leveraged by many businesses like retail etc.

How do I read QR Codes?

Obviously to the normal naked human eye, this is not a greatly inviting image, though there are free QR code readers/ scanners which you can download on your android phones/ smart devices which help you read the information. One of the strongest being an offering from Google called, Google Goggles, which helps you decipher QR codes. You can download Google Googles here.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Do you Tango - Engaging Free Video Calling, Anytime, Anywhere

The video grab above shows how easily you can use your smart phone with Internet access to make a free video call.

Do you Tango?
Tango is the service which lets you make video calls anywhere, anytime, through your smart phone. All you need to do is to download and install the Tango application on your phone!

How does Tango work?

Tango offers high-quality video calling on almost any smart platform iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android phones and tablets, and works on 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi.

You can download Tango from the App Store and Android Market. Its a free download and takes seconds to register. With a single tap, invite your friends through email or a text message to Tango with you. Your friends will receive a personal invite from you and once they register, you can Tango with them immediately. If your friends already have Tango installed on their phone, their names appear in your Tango Contacts list automatically. All you need to do is to tap a name on your list and you are ready to Tango.

How does it help your business?

For any business, keeping in close touch with the customer is crucial. Especially for the Small and Medium enterprise. With Tango, you can be in touch with your customers for free through video calling. Your customers can always see you and you can be on the move while you make free video calls. Being on mobile, Tango also helps you make interactive and interesting sales pitches to your customers who might be sitting in any part of the globe. One of the interesting uses could be that you could walk your customer through your entire store/ facility and help him make a decision.

The service is absolutely free. You can just download the tool on your mobile (will be soon available on your desktop) and make free video calls.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Google Gets You Reviewed : Google Places

There have been many reviewing platforms before online which the Small and Medium enterprises have been leveraging. Many small businesses rely on generating positive word of mouth by managing their reviews online. With Internet taking up space on the shelf, reviewing products and services online has become far easier and powerful for the customer, as the customer can now not only review an item but share it on the social web, which empowers him/ her to get feedback of others who have experienced the service like him/ her.

Google lets you review everything on Google Places

The above screen capture shows how Google Places lets you not only host your business in a manner that it is searchable online, but also lets customers review your business.

How to write a review?

The process is fairly simple actually. All you need to do is to click on Start Rating and you will be re-directed to the following screen:

As an example we are rating restaurants in the city of New Delhi. Google lists down all the restaurants which are in its database on your screen in a particular geography and you can simply rate it by marking the stars at the bottom of each image. You can also write a review by clicking the "write a review" link at the bottom of the image.

How does this help my business?

To reach to this point, you first have to list your business on Google. The search engine must recognize your business, which will help customers find it online. Once done, your business is now searchable by location/ geography and customers can write reviews about your products/ services. Most of the customers before buying are increasingly taking reviews online, hence the reviews about your product/ services are increasingly being seen by many prospective customers which will affect your sales.

How do I manage this?

No business can be perfect at all times and hence if a customer does write a negative review about your business, you must reach out to that customer online and try and address the issue. This engages your audience and presents you as a responsible and active business.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

How to Create a Company Page on Linkedin?

Many small businesses come up with this question on how to create company pages on Linkedin. Many of them in this confusion go ahead and create company profiles as there are individual profiles on Linkedin, which is not what it is meant for. Profiles are for users and not companies. A user profile is meant to include all the relevant professional details about a user on Linkedin and is not targeted for companies.

Present your business on Linkedin: Create a Company Page

The company pages on Linkedin is shown as in the screen capture above. Linkedin's knowledge resource center elaborates on how to create a company page and what is it all about!

As Linkedin explains on the website: "Company Pages are a company’s profile of record on LinkedIn and a powerful way to speak to millions of professionals through word-of-mouth recommendations and trusted testimonials. It’s like a LinkedIn profile for a company.

For LinkedIn members, Company Pages are a great way to research companies you’re interested in, follow them to stay updated, see what kind of people work there, and even review the products and services you use. For companies, Company Pages present an opportunity to reveal the human side of your company. Provide a peek at the individuals behind your brand and highlight how members use your products. Your Company Page offers tools to bring your brand to life."

Great, so how can I create a profile for my company?

To create a company profile, what you need to do first is to visit the following URL: http://www.linkedin.com/company/add/show . Once done, you will be re-directed to the following page, as shown in the screen capture below:

Once you have the company information fed into the company profile's page, it automatically creates your company profile on Linkedin, which looks like in the screen capture below:

You can view all sorts of updated information about a company on Linkedin company profiles, from number of employees to the company size, at times revenues and most importantly the employees. From the exiting employees to new hires. This is crucial information which a company is sharing with the world while creating an open culture.

The company page also helps the company keep track of how its employees are connecting online and especially this is crucial in terms of what sales teams do. Their contacts on Linkedin can be leveraged by businesses to further their business and presence and create new opportunities.

You can easily "Follow a Company" on Linkedin (this might be any company) from your competitors, to some in which you would be looking for an opportunity etc. And all you need to do to follow a company is to click on the "Follow company" button on the company page and you are done. All he updates from the company page will now reflect on your Linkedin profile timeline.

How does this help my business?

All stakeholders to a business environment, employees, clients, customers, investors are always interested in knowing more about your company. They are always interested in what's the latest and how are you growing? This information can easily be fetched from the company profiles on Linkedin.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Expert Speak: Mr. Amit Dang

HSBC India's Factoring & Open Account Finance Solutions for SMEs

The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India typically face a key issue of raising finance, both for long term and working capital requirements. The otherkey issue is lack of infrastructure facilities.

The HSBC Group globally offers a suite of financial solutions to SMEs, including vanilla financing and factoring. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, India (HSBC India) leverages these global capabilities and applies its learnings to offer a broad suite of transaction banking solutions, working capital financing and factoring. This, to my mind, goes a long way in overcoming the key issue of lack of adequate financing available to SMEs to grow the business.

The HSBC Group has global presence across 87 countries and enables customers to do business at an international level. HSBC India, under its factoring platform offers a range of receivable finance solutions, including the traditional factoring product to SMEs, the key benefits of the product are:

Facility based on strength of buyers and their payment track record with you
Allows you to give better terms to your customers (cash discounts from customers).
Mobilize cash tied up in receivables – cash flow generation
Credit protection for export factoring transactions.
Alleviates your internal administration work & reduced cost of collections
Allows you to focus on business and outsource collections and ledger management job to Bank.

Now, a new system-based Reverse Factoring proposition, known as Supplier Invoice Finance Scheme (SIFS), designed to offer funding facilities to suppliers of large local/global buyers, has also been added to the factoring proposition. All the transactions will be processed online, facilitating reduction of paperwork and the corresponding processing cost.

The key benefits to SME customers of large buyers having tie-ups with HSBC are: -

Earlier payment of receivables
Protection of supply chain by ensuring liquidity.
Comfort of simple product, simple enrolment, owned bank system with web delivery, reputable and scalable service provider.
Improved cash flow management and visibility of incoming payments.
Lower total cost of finance.
Finance on top of other WC facilities, as facility linked to specific buyer receivables.
Removes credit risk costs and processing costs out of supply chain.
Provides detailed MI and reporting

HSBC India also offers traditional Vendor / Purchase finance, facilitating customers to finance payables to their vendors against their credit lines to meet the working capital needs. SMEs can take benefit of such programs interfacing with the corporate buyers and understanding their channel finance tie up with the Bank. Benefits are similar to SIFS only key difference is, it is not paper-less

HSBC India’s Distributor Finance Program (DFP) is another key product for dealers/ distributors of corporates who can’t access funds at a competitive rate, but through a corporate tie-up with HSBC India under the DFP program are able to meet their working capital needs at a competitive rate. The key benefits are: -

Cheaper than traditional sources of working capital financing
No transaction charges, ledger maintenance charges or account maintenance charges
Minimal stamp duty requirements
Minimal collateral requirements from Dealers/Channel Partners
Easier assessment criteria and quick turnaround time.
Additional facility to the Dealer/channel partner without disturbing existing banking arrangement

These products are backed by HSBC India’s internet based systems, which provide customers with adequate interface for online viewing and transactional purposes.

To sum up, HSBC India is fully geared to provide banking solutions to SMEs in India.

The author of the article is Head, Factoring and Open Account- Finance, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC)

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Doing an Event, Promote it Free on Facebook

Events are the best places for executives to network and businesses to promote their products and offerings. There are interesting events which happen throughout the industry and the year which create a powerful platform for executives and entrepreneurs to network and generate business.

Many Small and Medium businesses are finding it very relevant to participate in events and many of them are hosting smaller and more focused versions of large format events themselves. There are many popular events in the industry which have been started small by SMEs and are gaining vast acceptance by the community and popularity by the audience.

Promote your events for free through facebook!
facebook helps you create events and promote them for free online. To start with, you need to click on the "events" tab on the left sidebar menu on your profile. Once done you will be re-directed to the following page:

To create your own event, click on the "Create Event" link on the top of the page and you will be re-directed to the following screen:

Once you key in the details of your event, simply press the "Create Event" button on the bottom of the event page and your event will be created, which will look like the following:

You can now very easily share the event on your wall using the share button and also invite people from your friends network for the event. If your event is compelling enough and if you position it well for your audience they might share the link in their network and many more people who you might not be able to reach directly will get to know about the event.

How does it help my business?

facebook has a large captive base globally, with over 750 million people. In India as well, facebook have millions of active users. Not everyone is your target audience, but many of these people are in the networks of others who might be relevant to your event. This essentially helps your business reach out to a whole captive base which you might not have previously been in touch with or explored.

facebook events also help users engage with your event. They can post their queries by posting on the event wall, which you can answer. Also when someone updates their status of "I am Attending" the event by clicking on the link on the event page, it shows up on their profile page to their friends list, which increases your chances of reaching out more people and hence increased registrations.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Tips for Small Businesses to Reach Out to the Target Market

For Small and Medium businesses its a particularly pressing challenge to create a powerful Go To Market strategy and execute the same in full strength. SMEs cannot afford big budget advertising and customer connect initiatives. They cannot afford to reach out to the masses or the niche (as the business requires) with print ads in magazines, newspapers etc. SMEs also many a times don't have dedicated agencies to work with OR teams to take care of their marketing/ customer outreach initiatives.

With all these challenges, how should they reach out to the relevant customer segment?
For almost all the small and medium businesses, there are certain common factors which come into play at various growth stages of the companies. To establish an effective marketing strategy the following pointers should be looked upon:

A confident word of mouth always helps! For any small company specifically a strong word of mouth from a trusted/ respected entity is a great asset. This will fetch you business far faster and easier. But obviously to ensure this, you have to create a WOW experience for your customers. Don't over commit. Deliver what you promise as a business, whether it is small/ large. But deliver.
An apple might work for me, it might not work for you. Never believe that if an X business is using facebook, it will work for you as well, just because it is a cheap medium of marketing. NO. It just might be the other way round. facebook might just not be the tool for your business. You have to understand your business, your customers and hence set your business objectives right. Not every marketing effort has to culminate into a customer.
Attend relevant industry events. Networking helps. Wherever in the world you might be, networking is one of the strongest possible tools, which can help you in almost every stage of your business. From setting up to the growth stage. Attend all industry relevant events, ensure that you are not giving a sales pitch everytime, Just connect with relevant people and maintain relationships.
Bundling works! Especially if you are a product, you can always bundle your offering with that of a larger company, hence leveraging the power of their sales. There are many applications which come bundled now when you buy your mobile phones. Similarly you can think of innovative partnerships which help you reach out.
Build and participate in knowledge communities. There is nothing more powerful than an engaged community. Participate in knowledge forums and communities online. It helps you establish credibility in an engaged group, which positions you strongly amongst peers.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Understanding the Long Tail on the Internet: Business Strategy

For Small and Medium business today one of the strongest possible aspects of exploring the market size and the opportunity is the Long Tail. With the Internet spreading across the length and breadth of the country, there are new consumer markets sprouting which requires a new set of product offerings with a supported set of services.

As the choice is increasing for consumers, there are more set of offerings available for the customers to choose from and as businesses are realizing it, there is a demand for products and services which is rising, which previously did not exist, as reaching out to customers in villages etc. was initially not possible.

Example, if we take the music industry, there was a time when people used to listen to radio as a mass medium and that was one way to reach the masses, as a product it could help you listen to your music without really buying discs. But with the Radio, the CD's going ahead came the Internet which changed the game. Internet created music libraries like Rhapsody which has a collection of millions of songs which can be streamed anytime from any part of the world. They have seen trends where customers are buying music which generally would be very hard to find in stores. This is music of the gone era, in cases even a decade old.

This trend shows the demand and consumption trends of a whole new market which now has access to interesting content which was not available before. The volumes of this consumption is so high that even at nominal prices it adds up significantly to the revenue.

What's in it for SMEs?
Many SMEs have strong products and related services which they are reaching out to the market with. Like all businesses they also target the larger segment of the market, where the Price-Demand-Supply ratios help them take their business to the next growth level. But there is stiff competition in the space and hence for small companies to compete becomes difficult.

This is where small companies can innovate and reach out to a new segment of the market which might not have the potential to buy the similar category of products and services, but can afford to buy a new set of customized services and products. There is a fairly large volume of such consumers which the SMEs can target using the Internet which is a low cost medium for companies to reach out to new potential markets and engage existing set of customers.

E-commerce
SMEs have a major opportunity in terms of E-commerce which they can explore. With the increased access to the Internet and increased buying power, SMEs should leverage online mediums to reach out to such potential customers with specialized set of services which have a lower delivery cost and also can be paid for online.

One can easily set up an E-commerce portal of their own, OR partner with portals like E-bay etc. to set up online stores, from where they can make online transactions. The advantage with these platforms is that they provide the sellers an existing infrastructure which the sellers can leverage to their advantage.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Hire Great Talent Through facebook for Free: Branchout

Many small and medium businesses are looking at leveraging the social media to its full potential to achieve various business objectives. While businesses understand the benefits of being on the social media, they do face challenge in setting the right business objectives and hence deriving the right results from their online initiatives.

One of the biggest challenges for any SME is to recruit the right talent from across the industry. Now facebook helps you do it for free.

Use Branchout on facebook
Branchout is one of the most popular applications on facebook which people are using to connect with each other while exploring their professional networks. You can explore more from your existing network. Example, if one of your friends is working in a company where you would like to work, you can always get connected and ask for help/ connects. Similarly you can recommended and refer someone for a suitable opening which you see at branchout!

How do I use BranchOut on facebook?
Its fairly easy. All you need to do is to install the application called BranchOut on facebook. Once installed you will be redirected to the following screen:

You can either browse through all the various Jobs/ Openings which people in your network have already posted and apply to them through these networks OR you can also post a job. There are both free and paid versions of this service.

How does it help my business?

In more ways than one actually. You can not only post a job for which you are looking to recruit a suitable candidate, you can also at the same time look at various jobs posted by competitors/ industry parallels and look at how they are doing.

How can I look for Jobs in my Industry?

All you got to do is to click on the "Jobs" tab on the top and you will be re-directed to the screen as shown in the screen capture below:

How do I post a job in my network?

The best part about BranchOut is that the moment you post a Job, it automatically gets shared with your network at BranchOut and not just that other people applying to it can also share it within their networks and hence you have access to a whole new talent base which previously you did not.

Posting a job is easy. All you need to do is to click on the "Post A Job" link on the top and you will be re-directed to the following screen as shown below:

Once you are done with posting your Job posting, simply click on the review Your Listing at the bottom and post a review, you will be able to publish your job listing to your network. The application smartly helps your business to reach out to a whole new network of interested people which you would not have had a direct access to previously. Also it helps you access your existing facebook network in a manner not possible before.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Manage and Bill Your Projects With Perfect TimeSheets: BeeBole

Many Small and Medium businesses are engaged in customer servicing, which involves taking projects and delivering to them while billing the customer on number of man hours involved. Project management skills come very handy at these times. Managing projects is a critical task at hand for any SME.

Managing timesheets in such a scenario becomes fundamentally crucial. Though you can use various in-house softwares built on excel sheets etc. a simple to use and easy to manage time logging software helps you be productive, manage your project costs and manage your delivery while making each project profitable for your business.

BeeBole helps you do just that!

What are the various features of BeeBole?

Fast and Flexible time recording

You can record hours against Clients, Projects, Sub-projects or Tasks very quickly. Also you can maintain absences like: Holidays, Leaves or Sickness.

Flexible billing methods

You can Choose the billing that fits your business. Track billable time by people, project, task or non-billable work. Keep your projects controlled with a powerful reporting tool. You can also Use various currencies and get a consolidated reporting. This helps you maintain your projects viability and ensure that you are always on track while keeping the project delivery profitable for your business.

Budget Tracking

You can Set a budget for your projects and sub-projects, either in time or money and monitor the progress of each project in real-time. The graphical overview of your projects execution allows you to quickly check if all your projects are on track and budget. This further helps you in defining and maintaining project profitability.

Understand where the actual time goes in the project

While delivering on projects you obviously need to understand instantly where the time goes in your organisation with a fast and graphical reporting. BeeBole makes is easier for you to understand the time spent through easy to understand charts, to drill down, and get more details about a customer, a project or a person's work. A graphical representation of the data helps you assess your time effectiveness.

Access your data anywhere

With the BeeBole interface available on mobile, you can access your data anywhere, anytime and be in touch with your projects while on the move. Such a facility helps you always be aware of your projects upkeep and hence a powerfully satisfied customer.

How do I use BeeBole?

You can try BeeBole for free till a team size of upto 2 people. For any team size over the given number, you have to subscribe to the paid version of the software.

All that you need to start using BeeBole is to sign-up as shown in the screen capture below:

You can also access BeeBole from your Google apps marketplace by adding the app to your favorite apps in the marketplace.

How does it help my business?

For any company which has projects to manage, BeeBole is the tool to ensure that your projects are well managed and are being executed powerfully while maintaining the profitability. Each project can be tracked powerfully with BeeBole, while the project manager can always be aware of the numbers and how the project is shaping up while ensuring client delivery and project profitability.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Present Your Data With Amazing Infographics: Visual.ly

Businesses today are working in the knowledge economy. There is data being created each day which is of a certain relevance to targeted stakeholders in every business. With new technologies and internet coming up, there is data in terms of consumer behavior, consumption statistics, online behavior towards a certain product etc. coming up. For Small and Medium businesses capturing this data and making actual business sense out of it is crucial.

Infographics for business
When raw information is presented in a well readable and visible format, it makes more business sense. Information presented in a good format can always make work more effective and efficient. Visual.ly helps you do just that. Visual.ly helps you create powerful infographics while displaying raw information in a more businesses oriented manner.

While using some very interesting self service tools online, you can build powerful visualizations which have their basis int he data which you provide into them.

What visual.ly helps you do is to make information look beautiful, more comprehensible and easy to understand. This obviously helps in making key business decisions while using complex data in a simplistic format.

Ho to use Visual.ly?

Using Visual.ly is fairly easy. All you need to do is to quickly create a login on the website as shown in the screen capture below:

While they are building their services, Visual.ly has given the following twitter service free to try to customers:

Once you fill in all the key details, the software automatically captures details from your twitter id and displays the final result in a very easy to comprehend simple looking infographic which will let you know all about your twitter profile and how well are you doing?

How does it help my business?

Powerful infographics help businesses in more ways than one. You can capture information and display the same in a format which is powerful and easy to comprehend. As the management you can take quick management and business decisions using this information. Access to such simplified information can help businesses take quick decisions and hence make the business operationally more active.

If you wish to know more on leveraging online tools for your business, our team of experts at IndiaMART Knowledge Services will be happy to help. Drop in a comment to this post OR contact us on our website: www.indiamart.com

Friday, July 15, 2011

Host Your Teleconferences on the Cloud: SuperConference

Businesses are leveraging technology like never before. With the cloud coming into picture, Small and Medium businesses are leveraging the power of the cloud to bring down their operational costs, while achieving several business objectives.

Many small businesses smartly use technology to avoid over spending on travel and doing business either online or through conference calls. There are may voice based solutions which SMEs can use. Though if you want to keep a record of all the conversations with the time-stamps of each of your audience, it becomes a little challenging. SuperConference, a cloud based tele-conferencing solution helps you achieve just that.

What is SuperConference?
SuperConference is a tele conferencing solution hosted in the cloud. Essentially what SuperConference allows you to do is to get a dedicated number where you and your audience can call in and join in a tele-conference. The best part about the tool is that it allows you to maintain a log of each of your tele-con, while also maintaining the time stamps of entry and exits of each of the participants in the telecon. You can also maintain and access the recorded version of your telecon for future use.

What are the various features/ advantages of SuperConference?

You dont' require any extra hardware
Free version available for 7 days
Detailed logs of each conference are maintained which are searchable and downloadable

How do I sign-up for a free trial?

For a free trial all you need to do is to login on the home screen, while filling in your details which will show the following screen to you:

Once your account is configured, you get an Email from the support desk and you are ready to use the service.

How does it help my business?

For SMEs, SuperConference is a fantastic solution. It not only helps you do the basics of hosting successful telecons, but also maintain a log of all the calls made, while you can also access the recordings of the calls with the time stamps of the various participants. This helps you create and maintain a powerful record of the various tele-cons that you host as a business, which you can instantly provide as minutes of meeting as a downloadable sound file.

SuperConference also helps you reduce down your cost of hosting such tele-cons as there is no extra infrastructure required to host such calls.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

How to See Trending Topics on Twitter: TrendsMap

Twitter is one tool which is gaining popularity globally amongst small and medium businesses. Businesses are communicating sharp and relevant within 140 characters, with their relevant target audience. Twitter has changed the way businesses communicate now.

While businesses are leveraging twitter to the best of their abilities, many of them aim at taking their brand communication viral using twitter. This helps businesses achieve visibility amongst the relevant target audience, while reducing cost of outreach.

What are trending topics?

Essentially when you share something on twitter with a #tag (hash-tag), you are creating a category of conversation which people relevant to the topic will engage in. Example, if we are discussing cricket as a game, we can use #cricket as the #tag. This essentially results in indexing of this tweet amongst all other tweets talking about cricket globally.

Lets say you used this #tag while the cricket world cup was on, since many people all around the world will be talking about #cricket chances are that it will start trending on twitter, which essentially means that it will become on of the most popular topics on twitter, which is being discussed by twitter users.

How do you find trending topics?

Its fairly easy to find trending topics. All you need to do is to login to the website: http://trendsmap.com/ and search for your location. Example, New Delhi India.

As shown in the screen capture above, you can select your country and city and based upon the location on the tweets and the #tag related, Trends Map essentially shows all the trending topics in that particular region.

If you click on New Delhi, India, you will be re-directed to the following screen:

The above screen capture shows the trends on twitter which are active right now on twitter in the New Delhi, India region. These trending topics keep on changing as new topics keep emerging.

How does this benefit my business?

What you can do with this information is become a part of this conversation and start emerging as part of the trending topic. Chances are that you will be followed by relevant people during the conversation and this will also help you connect with all relevant people who are talking about the same domain as you are.

Example, one of the current trending topics in New Delhi, India is #DeliciousTycoons if this is relevant to you/ your business, you can essentially see all the people who are a part of the conversation on twitter and hence connect with them. You can see this on Trends Map as shown in the screen capture below:

Trending topics help you create a viral outreach to your relevant target audience through twitter globally while reducing down cost of marketing.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

How to Determine Active Fans on Your Businesses facebook Fan Page: Questions

Small and Medium businesses are always on the lookout for innovative ways of reaching out to their target audience while understanding the activity and engagement levels of their audience. For any business its an imperative to understand how are their audience are reacting to the content and messaging being shared by them online.

With the online media/ digital media changing the way businesses communicate with their target audience, what becomes of extreme importance for businesses is to understand how many fans/ followers, which they have online, are actually relevant and engaging actively? This also extends to leveraging new media tools to do effective market research!

How to determine active facebook fans for your business?
Your business might have many hundreds fans on your facebook fan page and in some cases thousands as well, though how many of them actually are engaging and actively discussing in your businesses messaging and communication is a crucial aspect to be seen.

Ask a Question!
facebook recently launched a feature called "Question" which is available on your personal profile and fan pages as well, as shown in the screen capture below:

How to ask a question?

All you need to ask a question on facebook is to click on the "Question" link and the following text box will appear, as shown in the screen capture below:

To post your question to the audience on facebook, all you need to do is click the "Ask Question" button as shown in the screen capture above. The question upon asking on facebook will be displayed as shown in the screen capture below:

The above screen capture shows the results of a question asked on facebook.

How to use these results?

Businesses can leverage the "messaging" feature provided by facebook to get in touch with each of the people responding to the "questions" with custom messages. Eg: if you have are a membership driven organisation and you need to check whether your facebook fans are your members and who all are not, you can simply do this by asking a question. The answers by members will let you know of the same. This will help you create messaging for non-members who can be further converted to being a member. This essentially reduces effort, time and gives track-able ROI.

How does it benefit my business?

For SMEs what is of importance here is the fact that facebook shows the pictures and the names of the people who have answered the question. Based upon the data received, the business can actually understand the activity and engagement levels of the audience it has online. This also ensures that the business knows who are the target audience which are loyally engaged by the messaging of the business.

This helps emerging businesses classify their audience into categories according to their engagement loyalty and hence ensure that the communication sent to the various audience is customized according to their engagement levels with the business.

This helps SMEs reduce the cost of marketing and communication, while ensuring that business communication is highly effective and conversion oriented online. The same also helps businesses in generating calculable ROI on their investments online.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Make Your PPC Campaigns Deliver Better: Online Advertising for SMEs

For many Small and Medium enterprises, Internet has proven to be the best tool possible. Small companies operate with the basic challenge of having either very low OR almost no budget at all to market their business. They cannot leverage traditional media and hence online advertising and promotion provides them with a great alternative which is low cost to reach out to its potential target audience.

PPC Campaigns
Many SMEs would have already used the PPC (also known as the Pay Per Click) form of advertising presented by Google. In its simplest forms, PPC is basically an online advertising medium/ methodology which helps businesses/ individuals to engage their target audience with focused messaging and communication and hence drive traffic to the relevant online properties, where an action could be taken. In the PPC mode, advertisers, bid on keywords which are relevant to their business to maintain relevancy to the TG. There are flat rate models as well, where the advertisers pay a certain fee to use the service, though the Bid based approach is the most commonly used.

What are the ways in which you can make your PPC campaigns deliver better?

Target negative keywords

This is the most under utilized aspect of PPC. When you are marking keywords to target your audience, work on some crucial keywords which are opposite of what you are intending to do. Example, if you are targeting customers looking to buy washing machines, try using the word 'Used Machines'. This will help you classify the right set of users and mitigate the others on a different message which will engage them.

Your Ad copy must be compelling (at times incentivized)

You would want someone to take an action after clicking on an Ad. Its not just about them clicking on an Ad. After doing that, once your audience land onto a certain page/ landing page, your call to action must be so strong that they actually engage. The Ad copy is the first step for anyone to take the second and hence it has to create a compelling reason for the TG to click on the Ad.

Long tail works

So when we talk about tail here, its a little different. When online, you don't really realize where your customers might be, if your business is global in nature. Use long tail keywords to target your audience who will show a far better conversion factor, as they just might be searching for the same set of words. Example: if you are a sports goods dealer, to position sports bicycles, you might want to use "sports bicycle with 6 gears" as the long tail keyword. There is a good chance that customers might search exactly for the same words and hence chances of your ad getting clicked are far higher, hence sales.

There is a time for everything in life

Timing is crucial. the time zones globally are different, hence if your campaign for a US based customer is working on a wrong timeline and you expect people to click when its time to sleep, well, then the whole online advertising bit might just not work for you!

Landing pages have to have a strong call to action

Just getting traffic on a page is not the ultimate aim of a PPC campaign. Once your TG reaches the landing page, you must ensure that they take a desired action. Your call to action must be strong enough to create a pull.

Team IndiaMART Knowledge Services is committed to enable SMEs with tools, tips and techniques to help them reach up the value chain and hence achieve the next level of growth. For more information on how you can create new opportunities for your business, drop in a comment to this post and we will get in touch with you!

Monday, July 11, 2011

Get Your Website Analyzed for Free by: Woorank

For any Small and Medium Enterprise leveraging the Internet is crucial and essential in more ways than one. For the business to reach out to its target audience online, strong online presence is necessary. Almost every business starts with a website. A business website is the window to the world. A business can express itself and position its offerings/ services/ products to the world online through a website. The most basic form of online presence in time today is a website and hence every business needs to ensure that you have it optimized.

Get your website analyzed for free

The screen capture above shows a detailed analysis of this blog site by Woorank. The service is free and actually analyzes your website in many ways. Though since it is aggregating its data from many online tools like alexa, Google etc. the rank might not be 100% accurate, but it still gives you a powerful picture to understand your website and how much is it really working out to be.

The above screen capture clearly shows how Woorank fetches all the information about your website from in page SEO to off page SEO, number of backlinks and top content etc. This actually helps you understand how your website really is faring.

What you can also do is use your competitors website to see their ranking and what is lacking in yours to be improved. Woorank actually helps you better your competition.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Print What You Like on a Web Page Without the Ads

There are many times when you need to take prints of a web page and show it to your design team/ teams to work on new concepts and ideas. t such times the only and the most common method available is to take a screen shot of the page and print the entire thing. What is you were able to edit the page quickly, remove all the unwanted stuff and print only what you wanted to, hence bringing more clarity to design and sharing only the required information?

Print what you like lets you do just that!

The above screen capture shows how easy it is to save paper and print only what is necessary. All you need to do is to enter in the URL of the website/ page you need to take a print for.

Once you do, it takes you to a platform where you can edit the website/ web page in a real time environment online and print, as shown in the screen capture below:

Print What You Like helps you save paper and be more efficient with design while displaying on the page only those elements which you want the receiver to focus on. It helps you also save on time and hence cost as there is no special editing required. The software makes it inherently easy for anyone to take a print of a website/ web page.